Saturday, February 7, 2009

Black Mermaid™ Marketing Tips 2 – 1001 Ways to Market Your Books

We say it again – 1001 Ways to Market Your Books by John Kremer.

This is one hell of a book and despite the "your books" oriented title, is completely compatible with the comics world, especially if you are a self-publisher or published through an indy publisher that doesn't have the marketing budget to do extensive publicity for you.

I bought my copy the States two years ago and had it signed by the author at an event I attended. It became my travelling companion on on several plane trips from thereon. I usually don't like defacing a book but this one is the exception – it has yellow highlighter marks all over it. John Kremer actually encourages it and thinks there is no greater honour than for a reader to use it in this manner.

So why is this book important for comics creatives?

In publishing, the key period for the promotion of a title is six weeks after its release. Beyond that you have about three months tops to get noticed and to make an impact on retailers' sales figures. To become a strong backlist title (that is, to remain in print with your publisher and to have permanent presence and shelf space in a book or comics store thereby ensuring you a consistent passive income stream via your royalty payments) the general consensus is that you need to do at least one marketing activity a day – this can mean anything from getting interviewed by your local newspaper to a big online push to effectively utilising your business card or getting on television. All these strategies and more (remember there are 1001 in all!) are covered in this book. We are not only writers and artists; we need to think like entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs have a belief and a saying – the marketing is more important than the master.